Character Breakfast

We pulled into Key West fairly early Sunday morning, but our excursion wasn't scheduled until the afternoon, so we had some time to spend in the morning. First order of business was breakfast, and this morning was our scheduled character breakfast in Parrot Cay. This had put a crimp in our plans since we had originally planned to sleep in this morning, but instead needed a "Mickey Wake-Up Call". After getting all "neat and pretty", we headed downstairs, where Johnathan greeted us and took us to our table. The breakfast was 'okay', but it was pretty much just the standard breakfast menu. For some reason we had it in our heads the character breakfast had better food, but we are probably confusing it with the umpteen character breakfasts we've done at Walt Disney World.

Mickey and Friends

The waiters got into the act by making napkin hats for everyone and then the main characters started coming by: Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Dale. We did't see Donald, Chip or Goofy, but we also didn't hang out and wait for all of the characters. The whole thing felt a little rushed because we were mostly done with our meal before the first character came by and then they came in pretty close succession after that.

Pool time

After breakfast, we considered getting off the ship and doing some shopping in Key West, then coming back for our excursion but decided that was too much trouble. We would regret that decision later. But most of us headed up to the pool area but Thomas decided to go check out Ocean Quest and the Lab. It was a great time to go to the pool because no one was there and Rebecca had the Mickey slide all to herself. Janie, Alex and J. R. relaxed while Rebecca played in the pool. J. R. picked up a couple of coffees from the Cove Cafe for Alex and he, but wasn't impressed with them. They were a little bitter for their taste, and for the amount they were charging, J. R. needed Starbucks quality. He didn't go back to the Cove Cafe for the rest of the cruise to see if the coffee got any better.

Lunch and Pirate Soul Museum

We grabbed lunch by the pool after Thomas joined us and then headed down to Diversions to wait for our excursion to leave. We had decided to do the Pirate Soul Museum and Shipwreck Historeum this time. On our last cruise, we had walked the length of the island ourselves so we had pretty much seen everything so we didn't want to do a tour and our other excursion choices were limited with a four-year-old. As we waited in Diversions, the skies which had been threatening earlier opened up and it began to rain fairly hard. We had made a decision not to bring our ponchos to save luggage space, figuring most of our excursions were including a beach trip anyway, so we'd be in swimsuits. We were regretting that decision as we walked off the ship.

But the rain let up for our walk to the Pirate Soul Museum and we just dodged some small sprinkles and some large puddles to get there. The museum was quite nice and set the tone well for the day. There were a lot of great artifacts and information about pirates and Alex and Thomas learned a few things, which is always good. One of the highlights is a special room where they take you inside, turn off all the lights and give you headphones. Then you sit and hear the tale of Blackbeard's murder while sitting in complete darkness, complete with sound effects of guns firing, explosions and the like. We thought Rebecca would be scared but the only thing she wanted to be sure of was that the arm around her shoulder was her mother's and not someone else's!

Alex found a cheap hook to go with his Capt. Hook costume in the gift shop and then we were walked over to the Shipwreck Historeum. It started to rain harder as we went inside. This museum was not as impressive. First, the 'actor' who was playing the owner of the warehouse was incredibly boring. Monotone, no voice inflection at all, which made us just want him to stop talking. The artifacts here were nothing special. We had been looking forward to climbing to the top of the tower, and we did, but it started to rain really hard while we were up there, so we came down quickly.

It was raining incredibly hard as we came out of the historeum so we ran to the local shop to try and stay dry. We had two goals for today, which were to get a piece of key lime pie and buy some rum cakes. We decided to just go and get wet so we headed out in search of the key lime pie place on the map DCL had given us. We got to what appeared to be the right location on the map, but didn't see any restaurants, so we gave up on the pie and headed down to the Tortuga Rum Cake company. We sampled rum cakes while we dried off and then bought a rum cake assortment and an original rum cake to enjoy when we got home. Then we walked through the rain back to the ship. We were completely soaked, as were everyone else. But we were all in pretty good spirits. The woman in front of us shook water on J. R. and then profusely apologized, but he explained to her that he couldn't get any wetter. Another guy asked if it was still raining, because he couldn't tell anymore because he was so wet. Thankfully, DCL had towels for us at the dock and we dried off a little and headed to our rooms to shower and change.

Dinner

With some time before dinner, Rebecca wanted to go to the Kids Club, so we took her down there and Alex and Thomas went to the Ocean Quest open house. They played for awhile and then met us at Parrot Cay, where we were having dinner tonight. It was the standard Parrot Cay "Island Menu" tonight for us. J. R. had both the Chicken Wings and Crab Martinique as an appetizer and skipped the soup/salad tonight. His entree was a plate of baby back pork ribs with prickly pear barbeque sauce and these were quite yummy. The desserts did not jump out tonight, so it was an ice cream sundae with double fudge bar and it was an excellent choice.

Belle and Wendy

Rebecca had been complaining about the lack of Princesses on the cruise (having seen none at the character breakfast), so she was delighted to run into Belle outside Lumiere's as she was preparing to enter for the French Dinner. Rebecca ran up and said 'hello' and gave Belle a hug. Peter Pan and Wendy were going to be in the atrium soon, so we hung around and were one of the first people in line to see them, which made Rebecca even happier. After Peter Pan came a visit with Princess Aurora and that allowed us to check off 'meet Princesses' on Rebecca's list of things to do. (Go to pool - check. Go kids club - check. Meet Princess - check. It was a good day for Rebecca.)

Meeting Minnie

Since we'd seen Michael Harrison on a previous cruise, we decided to skip his show that night. Janie took the boys to see "The Guardian" in the Walt Disney Theatre. J. R. didn't go because he has a rule to skip Kevin Costner movies and with Ashton Kutcher in this one as well, it was a definite "Must Miss". Rebecca was complaining she wanted to go back to the kids club so he took her back there, then went down to Diversions to watch some of the KC-San Diego game and have a beer. As the game was winding down, J. R. saw that Minnie was going to be doing pictures, so he picked up Rebecca and we went and got a picture taken with Minnie.

Movies and Chilling

Rebecca and J. R. headed back to the room after seeing Minnie to watch "The Polar Express". It was also showing up on the big screen and they went up there, but it was a little chilly and there didn't seem to be anywhere to sit because they were arriving late. They wished they would come up with a way to allow more people to experience the movies on the big screen, but they didn't want to have to stake out a place an hour in advance. They were serving popcorn, so J. R. grabbed a box and headed down to the room where he and Rebecca watched the movie. Janie and the boys arrived shortly after and the boys went to their room for the night and the rest of us finished the movie and went to bed.

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